Ive explains that for him a key difference between a watch and a phone is the effort involved in interacting with it:

One of the things that struck me was how often I’d look at my watch and have to look again quite soon afterwards, because I hadn’t actually comprehended what the time was. If I had looked at something on my phone, because of the investment involved in taking it out of my pocket or my bag, I would certainly pay attention. I quite like this sense of almost being careless and just glancing.

Ive also tells the FT that it is the intimacy of the watch that made it a logical product for Apple to turn its attention to. He says it is the most personal product the company has ever made and that Apple most significant contributions come in personal products.

The Apple Watch was first unveiled in September 2014 by Tim Cook. Photograph: Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP

He stresses that “while the watch is an extension of the phone’s functionality”, it’s also a new platform. But he is less than forthcoming on how many he thinks Apple will sell:

I’m much more concerned about how we can make them as good as possible than how many we’ll sell. We’re brutally self-critical and go through countless iterations of each product.

Ive also spoke about the Apple Watch in an interview with the New Yorker in which he says that the first incarnation took just six weeks to design. However, he took a year to settle on the interchangeable watch straps, adding that most people are “OK to a degree with carrying an identical smartphone to millions of other people, but a watch needs to be more unique”.

He also elaborated on the key functionality that differentiates a watch from a phone when it comes to notifications:

This [a watch] isn’t obnoxious. This isn’t building a barrier between you and me. If I get a notification here, it will tap my wrist … I can casually look and see what’s going on.

Ive also explains why the Apple Watch’s “digital crown” is positioned off to one side and closer to the screen than the back, rather than being symmetrical like a winding wheel on a traditional watch. He says this is because its function is different. To place it centrally would be “literally referencing what’s happened in the past”, but “the information about what it does is then wrong”.

And for those wondering why the watch face is a round-cornered rectangle, rather than a simple circle one might expect from Apple’s design studio, Ive explains:

When a huge part of the function is lists,a circle doesn’t make any sense.